The Truth
by Krysnel Nicavis
Summary: Dean's spent a lot of time searching. For what, he isn't aware of. He isn't even aware he's been searching for whatever it is. Until he almost loses it. (Pre-Destiel)


**Title:** The Truth  
 **Fandom:** Supernatural  
 **Characters:** Dean Winchester/OFCs, Dean Winchester/Castiel, Sam Winchester (mentioned), Claire Novak, Lisa Braeden (mentioned), Ben Braeden (mentioned), Amara (mentioned)  
 **Prompt:** Written for the "January 31 Day Place Challenge"; Day 4: Bar  
 **Word Count:** 2,177  
 **Rating:** M  
 **Genre:** Romance  
 **Summary:** Dean's spent a lot of time searching. For what, he isn't aware of. He isn't even aware he's been searching for whatever it is. Until he almost loses it.

 **Author's Notes:**  
Some general season references.  
Specific Episode Tags:  
5.04 "The End"  
6.01 "Exile on Main Street"  
7.02 "Hello, Cruel World"  
9.09 "Holy Terror"  
10.20 "Angel Heart"  
12.03 "The Foundry"  
12.09 "First Blood" (written prior to air date)  
5.03 "Free to Be You and Me"  
7.17 "The Born-Again Identity"  
9.03 "I'm No Angel"  
10.22 "The Prisoner"

 **Disclaimer:** I own nothing …

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 **Year 1**

Twenty-six year old Dean Winchester stumbled a bit as he entered the tiny apartment of his current night's date. The cute little brunette under his arm giggled and tucked herself closer to his side, nuzzling his jaw. He gave her a cocky grin and pressed a heated, and intent filled kiss to her pink little lips.

He'd appreciated the way her short little skirt had hugged her hips when he'd first laid eyes on her in the bar earlier. He appreciated even more the feeling of her wide hips beneath his fingers. He cupped her pert ass in his hands and lifted her, wrapping her legs around his waist as they kissed and he stumbled his way to her bedroom.

Her laugh echoed through the apartment as they landed on the bed.

 **Year 2**

A small part of him felt a little bad for ditching Sammy at the pool table, but he'd been holding his own pretty well and the hot little redhead that was sitting at the bar of the pool hall was giving him that roving eye that he just couldn't ignore.

She'd practically ripped his shirt off of him before shoving him onto the couch. She put on a little sexy music and did a little strip tease for him before climbing into his lap. He lost himself in the mounds of her perky breasts as she ground down into him through his denim.

God, he loved his life sometimes.

 **Year 3**

Two words: Trip-lets. Dean found himself tied to the bed posts of an expensive looking four-poster bed as a set of three sexy little blondes had their wicked way with him.

The first two had licked and sucked at his neck and nipples while the third had started sucking him off. He was so into it he almost didn't realize when she'd started teasing the tight ring of his ass. But, truth be told, he really wasn't minding it. In fact, when she'd managed to locate a very specific spot inside him, he was completely all for it.

In the end, he had one riding his face, one riding his junk, and the third riding his ass – the last in a _phenomenal_ way.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a night of the last year of life.

 **Year 4**

Dean was tossing back shots at the bar. Really, he was simply enjoying the taste of the alcohol on his tongue. Enjoying the pleasantly warm burn it left in his throat. Not like hellfire and sulfur and ash and decay.

By the end of the night he'd found some other poor soul who was just looking for a night of fun. He lost himself in her. Or at least tried to.

He let her ride him hard and fast. Tried to fuck his way away from the nightmare that had been his existence for forty fucking years. Tried to achieve what the alcohol just wasn't. Tried not to think…

A flash of blue eyes was all he really needed before he came. Crashing back into himself and his body relaxing.

It never really dawned on him that her eyes had been green.

 **Year 5**

He'd normally rush off to the nearest watering hole in whatever town he was currently in after an experience like that. He'd lose himself in the first curvaceous body he deemed his flavour of the evening.

But the images kept flashing into his mind. Sammy… Cas… Himself… The image in his pocket nearly felt like it was trying to burn a hole in his jacket. An image that would never come into creation. Not if he'd have anything to say about it. And come Heaven or Hell, he'd have something to say about it.

But one look at the celestial being next to him had him changing his mind. The image of the drunken, drugged up, hippy Castiel could become had him changing his mind. He'd told Cas never to change, and he really meant it. He never wanted this… Angel of the friggin' Lord to ever become something like the washed up train wreck he'd seen in that alternate future.

So, for tonight, he invited the angel for a drive.

 **Year 6**

If anyone, and Dean meant anyone, had told him one, two, twenty years ago that he'd be living a normal, white picket fence life with a beautiful woman by his side raising an awesome kid together – in Battle Creek, Michigan of all places – he'd have kicked their teeth in before drowning them in holy water.

But there he was. Flipping burgers at a barbecue for neighbours and work buddies and their significant others and families. Making sure Ben got to school on time and did his homework. Tossing back a couple beers with a buddy after work before going to bed next to Lisa every night. And work. Holy crap. He had a god damned respectable job working in construction with a steady bi-weekly paycheque.

It was every man's dream life.

But it never felt like his.

He'd lay awake some nights feeling empty inside. He missed his brother. His broken but still good family. Heck, he even missed that dorky angel that he'd once found annoying.

He missed being himself.

 **Year 7**

He knocked back three shots of Tennessee whiskey in a row before ordering three more.

He couldn't take it. He needed to forget. To erase all of it from his mind. Hell, he'd be happy just to erase a fraction of it.

He needed to get drunk. He needed to get laid. He just needed _something_ to take his mind off of everything that had happened lately. Everything that was going on now. The new horror that had been unleashed unto the world.

Most of all, he just needed to forget about that damned coat that was decidedly _not_ folded neatly like a little pillow in the bottom of the current crap car he was forced to drive while Baby was in her own form of witness protection slash hell.

Maybe the brunette at the end of the bar eyeing him with crystal blue eyes could help him forget.

 **Year 8**

On the plus side, both he and Castiel were out of Purgatory now. On the downside, it turned out that Cas had been under a weird kind of angel mind-control by some bitch named Naomi. He got past that… after beating Dean to a bloody pulp.

Plus side, they met their paternal grandfather and solved the mystery of where he'd disappeared off to. Downside, he died. But it was in typical Winchester fashion: dying to save family.

Big plus: they have their very own Bat Cave.

And if, once Castiel came back into their lives, he spent an evening just nursing a glass of scotch in the bunker and simply listening to the angel indulge him by telling stories of things that happened ages ago, well who was going to know?

 **Year 9**

Dean sat on a cold, hard floor in the bunker, a sifter of brandy in his hands.

It was all his fault.

Kevin was dead. Sam was gone, riding shotgun to a douchebag angel in his own body. Cas, while he'd got someone's mojo back, was god knows where. And Crowley was still chained up in the dungeon.

He takes a large gulp of dark, honey brown liquid. Trying to lose himself in the oblivion the drink could bestow.

It was all his fault, and he knew it. He was just a high school drop out with a GED and a give 'em hell attitude. He was such a screw up…

 **Year 10**

Okay so being sidelined to hang out with the runt wasn't so bad. Normally he'd find the nearest dive bar with a pool table and hustle a few schmucks out of an easy few hundred. But Castiel's wayward sort-of-stepdaughter, while old enough to start hunting if she wants to, was still a little too young to frequent such establishments without raising the wrong eyebrows.

Still, mini golf wasn't a too bad way to spend an evening. Even if his skills were vastly underappreciated. And, alright, her personality wasn't completely lacking despite her lack of taste in culture. And by culture he meant classic movies and awesome music.

Jimmy hadn't seemed all that bad, now that he thought about it. Sure, he'd only known the dude for about a day or so around ten years ago, but he was sure his daughter at least had some potential to be a halfway decent human being in his book.

Cas seemed to like her anyway.

 **Year 11**

He felt… dirty.

And not the good kind of dirty. Dean had never felt like this before. Despite his life of debauchery, he'd never felt dirty or used or (dare he say it?) cheap.

From the moment the Darkness had been released and spoken to him in that field, he felt like his life was stuck on a fish hook and he was being lead around by the worse lip piercing in creation.

And, to top it off, his best friend – the best entity he'd ever been in contact with – was riding shotgun in his own vessel to the second biggest bad they'd ever come up against.

And _she_ was taunting Dean with him. She had him.

And fine, he was man enough to admit to himself that _maybe_ Cas had actually wanted to be possessed by Lucifer. Dean knew the idiot just wanted to do the right thing, and had wanted to ever since the whole swallowing souls to become God debacle. But he missed him, dammit. He needed him. Whole and home.

Christ, he needed a drink. Sam was right, he couldn't really even _get_ drunk anymore…

 **Year 12**

Who really cared whether or not he'd die of alcohol poisoning before he'd get blackout drunk these days? His mom was back, _really back_ , after thirty-three _years_. She was here. Alive.

And she didn't want him…

She wanted her baby and her little boy back. She didn't want him.

He needed to lose himself in someone. He needed to forget. To not be himself for just a little bit.

He took another swig of whatever alcohol he'd pulled out of the cupboard and fished out his phone.

 _Hey Cas_

 **Year 12.5**

Well, solitary confinement had been interesting, to say the least. Course, it had nothing on Hell – or the Cage, according to Sam.

But now he was out. He was home.

He sat on the edge of his bed and he felt… adrift. Something was… missing.

His musings were interrupted by a knock on his door. "It's open," he called out. The door opened to reveal Castiel. "Hey, Cas," Dean grinned softly.

"Dean," Cas nodded in return. He entered the room and, after a moment of hesitation, closed the door behind him.

"Something on your mind?" Dean asked at the pensive look on the angel's face.

Castiel was silent for a while, just watching Dean. Studying him. "How are you, Dean?"

"Oh, I'm great," Dean replied with false cheer. "I'm fine."

Cas tilted his head. "No. You're not," he simply stated.

Dean looked into his friend's eyes. He took in a breath and exhaled. "No. I'm not."

"Is there anything I could do?" Castiel asked earnestly.

Was there? Dean looked into Castiel's eyes again and thought. He thought about a lot of things. About the first time they'd met. The time he'd taken the admittedly naïve angel to a "den of iniquity" as Cas had called it. He thought about that alternate future that never came to be. About the year without his best friend or his brother. About watching Cas walk into that river and thinking he'd never see the angel again… then suddenly finding him at the bottom of the stairs in front of some house, apparently _married_ to some crazy chick and going by a name he'd picked randomly online. He thought of purgatory, and his insatiable _need_ to find the angel. And he realized Castiel's own need to keep Dean safe during that time. He thought about Cas being human, and him _stupidly_ turning him out of the bunker… about beating the weakened angel into a bloody mess with his bare hands… about nearly losing him to Lucifer and Amara after already nearly losing him _so many_ other times before…

He thought about replying 'no'…

Instead of saying anything, Dean stood. He took a fortifying breath and strode purposefully towards Castiel. The truth is, he'd had a lot of time to think these past weeks of imposed solitude. A lot of time alone with only himself, and he'd eventually refused to be lied to by himself anymore. And there had been more than once that he'd thought about how this could go. About how he _wanted_ it to go.

So he didn't say 'no'.

He didn't say anything.

…

Castiel gasped as their lips pressed together. A heat sparking in his very core unlike anything he'd ever truly experienced before… _Home._

\- 30 -

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 _Completed: January 14, 2017_


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